III. To the Principal Arguments of the First Question

46. To the arguments [nn.1-3].

To the first [n.1]: I concede that whatever is in God is eternal by identity; but it is not necessary that whatever is predicated of God, by the fact that something else has a disposition to him, is eternal formally, because nothing else has an eternal disposition to him - just as if God is eternal and loved in time by a created will, he is indeed said to be loved by us but not ‘loved eternally’.

47. To the second [n.2]: the consequence does not hold, because when extremes are of different ideas, then, on account of the fact that one extreme exceeds the other, there is no need for there to be a like coexistence of one with the other and conversely, -just as this inference does not hold, ‘whatever is eternal is with the whole of time, therefore everything temporal is with the whole of eternity’; for the first part is true by reason of the immensity of eternity, and that is lacking in the other extreme, - and so there is no need for concomitance conversely, of the sort there is in the above inference. So here, the eternal can be the term of a new disposition to it (because what eternally exists can produce something de novo), and some appellation can be said of him from time, but the temporal cannot thus have the disposition of something eternal to him; or one can concede that the temporal too can be denominated from the disposition of something eternal to him, - as a stone, not only as ideational but as existing, is eternally known by God.

48. To the third [n.3]: ‘to come to be’, not determined through anything (namely when it is predicated according to something added to it [sc. ‘comes to be white’]), does not indicate the making simply of that of which it is said, - as that, if it be said ‘man comes to be’, making is indicated to be simply present in man; but if an adjacent third thing is predicated, as ‘man comes to be white’, coming to be is not indicated save according to something of him, namely what specifies him. And so someone might perhaps concede that God comes to be lord by indicating a making ‘in a certain respect’, namely a making according to some relation of reason or according to the termination of some relation; what however is conceded rather is that he begins to be lord, because this does not signify imperfection as ‘comes to be’ does; however in no way, either ‘comes to be’ or ‘begins’, is it conceded absolutely.